


Power of human sacrifice

by Anonymous



Category: Naruto
Genre: 5+1 Things, Between Episodes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Five times Sakura learns what it means for Naruto to be a Jinchuuriki, and once she doesn't have to.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15
Collections: Anonymous





	Power of human sacrifice

The first time Sakura encountered the word _jinchuuriki_ , it was completely unintentional.

On her part anyway; in hindsight she had no doubt that Tsunade had wanted her to discover the truth scattered among all of the classified reports she’d been given special access to, though Sakura couldn’t fathom why she’d blow something that was clearly a closely guarded secret.

Nevermind. At least being the Hokage’s disciple appeared to have _some_ perks… now she just had to utilise them to find the key that would bring Sasuke home, for good.

But this discovery hadn’t been about him.

Well, except for all the ways that it had. 

It started in the way most things regarding Naruto somehow tended to, with Sasuke. Not that either of them were actually _there,_ Sakura noted miserably, as if she’d ever be able to stop noticing. How ironic that she was starting to feel she understood them so much better once they were both gone.

The more she read though, desperately trying to understand the situation Sasuke was in, why he had gone in the first place, the less sense the world seemed to make.

Just how many secrets had her teammates kept? And how were their paths somehow so seemingly intertwined?

Because seriously, what were the chances of Sasuke abandoning the village (abandoning _them_ ) to join Orochimaru, the only known deserter of whatever ‘Akatsuki’ was, all in the hopes of killing his brother who was another recorded member of that exact group. The pair were even thought to have been _partners_ for crying out loud.

Partners in a group whose goals seemed to involve kidnapping Naruto, for some truly incomprehensible reason. (Sakura had always believed that if anyone had tried to take him as a hostage, they’d have gotten too annoyed and returned him within a couple of hours.)

Of course Naruto would have to be involved in something this weird though. It was a talent of his, effortlessly landing himself in the most dangerous situations possible, completely by chance. But this wasn’t like annoying the strongest fighters in the chuunin exams, or even a C-rank mission turning into an A-rank one. This was a group of S-ranked missing nin from multiple nations, who wanted to hunt him down.

All because he was apparently a ‘jinchuuriki’.

But if that was something worth making an entire organisation to kidnap people over, why couldn’t Sakura find a single mention of what the word actually _meant_?

It wasn’t a surprise that there was something a little… different about Naruto. She’d long noticed that he healed faster than should have been possible (even if she hadn’t truly appreciated how extraordinary the process must be until she’d started making headway in her medical studies), and that his stamina and chakra were far beyond the norm, and not to mention always growing.

Until now that had never seemed like a big deal though. Sakura had met enough ninja with kekkei genkais like Sasuke or the Hyuugas to know that some people were just born with capabilities that other people didn’t have. She’d always assumed it was a family trait.

Except Naruto didn’t have any family.

Again, that had never seemed that suspicious to her, being a shinobi wasn’t exactly the safest career path after all. But there was something incredibly discouraging about that word, jinchuuriki.

_Power of human sacrifice._

So who had been the sacrifice?

_Was it a power that would be awakened by sacrificing Naruto?_

No, it couldn’t be, though the mere thought left her feeling sick. Sakura was pretty sure she’d witnessed the power that Naruto had, whatever strange gift allowed him to overwhelm Neji and that boy Gaara from the sand.

Had someone sacrificed his family when he was a baby to grant him that power?

Rationally she knew she was being paranoid, there were a million more likely ways for his presumably ninja parents to have died; the Third Shinobi War’s aftershocks and the Nine-tailed fox attack being the most obvious ones considering when it must have happened.

But none of the other orphans in the village were looked at the way Naruto was.

Maybe this power was why.

Only… that would suggest that a large portion of the village knew about it, but for some reason never talked about it, which seemed almost impossible in a place as large as Konoha.

Yet it made more sense than the idea of them just hating who Naruto was as a person.

Sure, he was a complete idiot, and a troublemaker, and a little bit of a pervert… but he was also one of the most authentically _good_ people Sakura had ever met, even if it had taken her longer than it should have to realise it. He cared about others, really cared, and was willing to fight for them too. From civilians to even their own enemies.

For all his bluster and coarseness, he was kind too… and willing to extend kindness to even the people who hadn’t had any for him.

Besides, even if he wasn’t all that nice, Naruto had been ‘that boy you should avoid’ for as long as she could remember, and no small child could warrant that sort of response with just their attitude.

It made her worry that there was something hateful about his apparent power, something _wrong_ with being a jinchuuriki. She knew better than to ask any of the adults though; if she hadn’t heard of until now then she wasn’t meant to have.

Which left just the files.

If being a jinchuuriki was really such a big thing, then there was bound to be some record of Naruto having his powers checked up on… whether he knew about them or not.

Any answers that did exist continued to elude her, regardless of how long she searched, and she considered that if there were records that could reveal the truth Tsunade may have hidden them from her, only leaving the one that mentioned Akatsuki’s target being ‘The Jinchuuriki Naruto Uzumaki’ as an oversight.

But without _him_ here to ask, all she can do is search through the echoes he’s left behind.

So she does.

Most the time she refuses to leave until Ino literally drags her out to grab something to eat, which usually happens at least once a week, the other girl accusing her of using work and obsessive study as a way to push down… everything from these last few months. 

That’s not it though. Sakura knows she misses her team, she’s not stupid enough to try and pretend she doesn’t. How could she not? Kakashi had always made her feel like everything was gonna be alright (not that it had actually fixed anything), and Sasuke… well, most the time it hurt to even think about him.

Yet it was Naruto who had caught her the most off-guard. It wasn’t that she missed him _more,_ but she couldn’t deny she felt his absence the most. He was so incessantly loud, and just… _there_ , that the second he wasn’t he’d left a vacuum in his wake. The other pair were always withholding, quiet and secretive in a way that made you feel a part of them was already very far away.

Her parents try to be supportive about it all, and she appreciates them for it, but they just don’t understand. They’d always been reluctant when it came to her team, only stopping from asking her to be moved from a team without Naruto in it because she’d claimed being taken from Sasuke’s team would ruin her life. 

Funny that Sasuke was now the one they disapproved of instead; wishing she’d just give up on a deserter like him, dismissing it as a hopeless crush.

It’s not. She knows it’s not.

Team seven had been willing to die for one another, because the thought of losing a comrade was more intolerable than death.

She feels _bereft_ with all of them gone.

Even Kakashi was seemingly always out of the village on a mission, though maybe that’s better than them being together with their grief. She knows he took Sasuke’s departure personally too. 

Never had she’d thought that she’d long for the days where Naruto spent hours rambling while they were all waiting for their sensei, and Sasuke pretended he’d rather be literally anywhere else. Joke was on him though, Sakura had never missed one of those small smiles he’d thought he’d swallowed.

Those memories had made her happy, once.

Not that she had the time to be miserable now.

All of her team were still out there, somewhere. Probably training until they were practically dead knowing them, and if Sakura didn’t… if she couldn’t dedicate everything she had to getting stronger too, then the distance between them would only widen.

Then they’d never be able to go back to those days.

If she doesn’t manage to understand the truth then they’ll never be able to either, she knows, and so she keeps searching, alongside her training.

Ironically it wasn’t until she paused (not gave up, she refused to do that anymore) her search for answers about Naruto and resumed her search for answers about Sasuke that she encountered something that could finally answer her questions.

(Honestly, her teammates felt _tangled_ sometimes, crossing each other in a labyrinth that she was helplessly unable to traverse.)

But she allowed a brief moment of eureka when she saw the word jinchuuriki again, before she realised the horrible implications.

The thing was, Orochimaru’s invasion of Konoha had involved the Sound and the Sand, and she’d only focused on the Sound last time, knowing that the other village had simply been manipulated and Sasuke wouldn’t end up having anything to do with them.

In fact, she’d only gone over the file in full because she felt like she’d finally run out of leads and was getting desperate.

This wasn’t a lead… this was practically the entire answer about what a Jinchuuriki was.

 _‘The jinchuuriki of the One-Tail, Gaara of the Sand, was smuggled into the village with intent of attack, under the pretence of the Chuunin exams, without the truth of his status being declared.’_ It read.

The rest of the report gave a very good impression of what whoever wrote it thought Gaara was.

A weapon.

A soulless container.

And a monster.

In a lot of ways it wasn’t far off from what she remembered of the boy; already half given himself over to the creature that apparently lay inside of him by the time she and Naruto had arrived to save Sasuke.

Those eyes hadn’t been human, just like his changing form.

But didn’t that just highlight that Naruto was nothing like Gaara? Naruto was none of those things.

Sakura knew he wasn’t.

Until now she’d wondered why he hadn’t seemed to notice that, why he’d been so… defensive of the other boy. So insistent that he understood him, and was like him. Not that she hadn’t been grateful, considering that it must have had a huge impact on Gaara for him to have helped Lee when they’d gone after Sasuke.

(It seemed everyone had been able to do something to help other than her after all.)

Even that hadn’t meant that she had necessarily trusted Gaara though. She hadn’t been afraid of him, hadn’t let herself feel fear even as she’d stood between his twisted form and a defenceless Sasuke, but she also wasn’t at all surprised that he was apparently the real deal as monsters went. Hadn’t his love of bloodshed already proven that without any strange powers or appearances needed?

The darkness in him had been clear from the outset.

There was no way Naruto could be anything like that. It just didn’t make any sense! Yes, he was a bit odd, but he wasn’t evil. He didn’t want to hurt people. To kill people! No way was he under the influence of a demon. Besides, she was pretty sure there was way too much just general… _Naruto_ going on inside of him for him to be a container for anything else. How could someone so full of life be a vessel for something that was bound to be nothing but hate?

Akatsuki must have gotten it wrong, or maybe the report on Itachi’s attack had gotten mixed up (even if she remembered Naruto admitting he and Jiraiya had encountered the man).

Would Konoha even go around sealing monsters into people? Just because the Sand did it, didn’t mean her village would stoop to the same level. She couldn’t imagine the Third Hokage who had always been so kind, even to Naruto, putting demons inside of anyone, let alone innocent kids!

Literally none of this made any sense!

Except, on some level, it made perfect sense.

Perfect, terrible sense.

Because Konoha had always been haunted by the shadow of a monster.

Whatever the ‘One-tail’ inside of Gaara really was, Sakura knew that it would be the same as the Nine-tails that had terrorised the village. It _had_ to be. If one could be dealt with by putting it in a little boy, then what did that say about the other?

What did that say about Naruto?

It was just like the idiot to cause her this much of a headache even if he was half the world away.

Eventually there is nothing she can do but ask.

Though she immediately wished she hadn’t.

The thing is… Tsunade is like no other sensei Sakura has ever had. Every teacher who has ever looked at her has seen that she’s weak, and sheltered from the pain some of her fellow students have felt. Tsunade sees it too she imagines, but she doesn’t want to preserve some ill-gotten notion of Sakura’s ‘innocence’ like all of her other teachers had. 

Sakura doesn’t know the entire story of Tsunade’s past, but the Hokage understands intimately that you can’t always keep people from true hardship just because it hasn’t come for them yet… If you tried they’d never be ready when it did. It seems like hard-won wisdom, and Sakura knows how poor a gambler her master is in the first place.

So Tsunade doesn’t bother pulling her punches, even with this.

Sakura had been half right, the third Hokage would never seal a demon into a child.

But the fourth would.

The fourth Hokage, the one Naruto idolised the most, damning him to a life of hatred and isolation.

She’s beyond fed up with crying after all these months, almost certain she’d used up any tears she may have ever had; but apparently she can spare some more, for her friend. 

“Why are _you_ crying about it?” Her master asked sharply.

“I feel so stupid!” She admits. “Did you know Naruto doesn’t celebrate his birthday?”

Tsunade looked taken aback from what must have seemed like an abrupt change of subject from her perspective.

“I thought it was weird when I found out, because Naruto is very… well, you know what he’s like.” She began explaining, wondering just how much she _truly_ knew him. “Team seven were only together long enough for one birthday to pass, and that’s how I found out.”

It was one of those memories that had used to make her happy, before she’d forgotten how to feel that way.

“He didn’t tell us… S-Sasuke and me, I mean. But Kakashi knew and he wanted us to take him out to eat or something to celebrate. Naruto seemed so shocked, like he genuinely couldn’t believe we’d want to. Part of me had thought it was just because he’d never had family to care about his birthday.”

Back then she’d noticed that he actually seemed just the slightest bit more subdued, but she’d chalked it up to him being touched by their gesture. The memory sours with the knowledge of the truth.

“But it was the anniversary of the Nine-tails attack too, and I thought he didn’t want to make a fuss to be considerate for all the families mourning… Which I suppose was true, in a way.”

It was unlikely that he didn’t know the truth, considering that.

He was blaming himself then, wasn’t he? How had he gone through that entire evening pretending everything was normal? Had team 7 managed to ease that burden for him, even for a moment?

“You think that Naruto is responsible for their grief then?” Tsunade asked, tone measured and even.

There was a right answer here, Sakura could tell. Only, for one of the first times in her life, she honestly couldn’t care if hers was it.

“Naruto saved this village!” She argued. “Everyone worships Lord Fourth for stopping the Nine-Tails, so they can’t turn around and hate Naruto when he’s the one who’s actually paying the price for it! Who has to have the entire village hate him because of it.”

A part of her honestly hates the Fourth Hokage now, and she doesn’t get how Naruto looks up to the guy knowing the truth… understanding it probably better than anyone else will ever be able to.

“The villagers aren’t forced to hate Naruto. It’s a choice they make every time they see him… though I think some less so than others as he’s begun establishing himself as Ninja.” Tsunade finally said. “Most of the adults in the village know the truth, but among your age group I imagine it’s just you and that Nara brat… if he didn’t tell his team that is.

Shikamaru knew? Sakura got that he was a lot cleverer than he let on, but she was curious as to what had given Naruto away. Was it the whiskers? She bet it was.

“I’m sure that Naruto will appreciate that out of his own peers, the two that know his secret don’t hate him at all.” Tsunade continued, and Sakura didn’t bother to argue the point. Yes, Naruto got on her nerves, but he was also closer to her than almost anyone else in her life.

Knowing the truth just made her hurt for him… and proud of his strength, amazed that he’d never ended up like Gaara.

She didn’t think she’d been any significant support there, despite what her sensei seemed to believe.

“Yeah, I suppose.” She said anyway, not wanting to antagonise her when they were otherwise in agreement.

Tsunade’s tone became sombre.

“He’s going to need that Sakura.” She said. “Naruto himself has only known the truth since he graduated the academy. This isn’t much newer to you than it is to him… and things are going to become worse before they have any chance of improving. Far worse.”

The thought that there was a point lower than this felt… impossible, even as the Hokage explained what was known of the Akatsuki’s mission.

But it didn’t matter, if when Naruto returned that darkness followed, Sakura would be ready.

She never wanted to be unable to protect the people she cared about ever again. 

How naïve she’d still been.


End file.
